Citation

Anderson BA. Drug Alcohol Depend. 2016; 167: 8-14.

Affiliation

Texas A&M University, Department of Psychology, 4235 TAMU, College Station, TX 77843-4235, United States. Electronic address: brian.anderson@tamu.edu.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2016, Elsevier Publishing)

DOI

10.1016/j.drugalcdep.2016.08.002

PMID

27507657

Abstract

BACKGROUND: The phenotype of addiction includes prominent attentional biases for drug cues, which play a role in motivating drug-seeking behavior and contribute to relapse. In a separate line of research, arbitrary stimuli have been shown to automatically capture attention when previously associated with reward in non-clinical samples.

METHODS AND RESULTS: Here, I argue that these two attentional biases reflect the same cognitive process. I outline five characteristics that exemplify attentional biases for drug cues: resistant to conflicting goals, robust to extinction, linked to dorsal striatal dopamine and to biases in approach behavior, and can distinguish between individuals with and without a history of drug dependence. I then go on to describe how attentional biases for arbitrary reward-associated stimuli share all of these features, and conclude by arguing that the attentional components of addiction reflect a normal cognitive process that promotes reward-seeking behavior.

Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.

Language: en